Quotes from Emile Habiby

But what about the secret I bear? I asked. Tell it to the world, he advised. And that is what I am doing.

Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they have themselves fabricated.

So I knew then that she loved me; and I therefore loved her. I have always known that I will inevitably fall in love with any woman who loves me.

The seas are wide and flow together. They have no borders and have room enough for all fish.

This is the way you always are. When you can bear the misery of your reality no longer but will not pay the price necessary to change it, only then you come to me.

The moon is closer to us now than are the fig trees of our departed village. you accept all these wonders - why not mine too?

We're used to the wonders of today. Why, if our forebears were to arise and hear the radio, see television, and witness a jumbo jet landing at an airport, spitting and roaring in the pitch-black night, they would think us polytheists for sure.

When I asked my extra-terrestrial friend why he took me in, he merely replied, What alternative did you have?

The rest - yes, that's me! The papers haven't ignored ne. How can you claim not to have heard of me? I truly am remarkable. For no paper with wide coverage, having sources, resources, advertisements, celebrity writers, and a reputation can ignore me. Those like me are everywhere - towns, villages, bars, everywhere. I am the rest. I am remarkable indeed!

My first ancestor, Abjar son of Abjar, mounted on his horse outside the city walls, had stared back at the tongues and shouted, After me, the deluge!

I don't differentiate between optimism and pessimism and am at quite a loss as to which of the two characterises me. When I awake each morning I thank the lord he did not take my soul during the night. If harm befalls me during the night, I thank him that it was no worse. So which am I, a pessimist or an optimist?

Well, the British do have the right to boast about their history, you know, especially about that great king of theirs, Ricahrd the Lionhearted. But even without our teaching you all this, they were participating in the process of rendering our country holy by spilling our blood. Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they have themselves fabricated.

Yes, ever since that time I began looking upward and awaiting their arrival. Either they will transform my monotonous and boring life completely, or they can take me away with them. Is there an alternative?

His eyes I saw too. Large and profound, they seemed to increase in depth as the dark fell on them, then to resurface as the lighthouse beam caught them again, as if symbolising in rapid sequence the constant recurrence of night and day.

Finally the true dawn emerged, splitting open the womb of the earth, and I found myself in the courtyard of the mosque, yawning and stretching my limbs

True power is expressed in quiet confidence; it was the sea's very calmness that epitomised its mighty force.

Candide was an optimist, but you're a pessoptimist. That fact, I repsonded, Is a virtue that, above all others, distinguishes my people. But you, he criticized again, seem to be imitating Candide. Don't blame me for that. Blame our way of life that hasn't changed since Voltaire's day, except that El Dorado has now come to exist on this planet.

But Saeed, Saeed, the children are our only hope!

How long must we wait for the lilies to bud?

The ultimate tale - of the fish that understands all languages: the seas are wide and flow together. They have no borders and have room enough for all fish.

My ancestors kept on breaking their necks searching the ground at their feet for buried treasure, and I too had found what I had sought for so long by gazing above my head and discovering my brothers from outer space who had restored my calm. Why should I be expected, alone among all my fathers and grandfathers, as I sat there on that stake, to submit my fate to the laws of nature and the rules of logic?

While I was sat there being my usual pessoptimistic self, he was ecstatic: Verdant fields! Green on your right and on your left; green everywhere! We have given life to what was dead. This is why we have named the borders of former Israel the Green Belt. For beyond them lie barren mountains and desert reaches, a wilderness calling out to us, 'Come you tractors of civilisation

He made me understand that there could be no release from their service until the day I died. He explained, Your father gave it to you as his inheritance, and you will pass it onto your children. They will curse you, but our long arm will reach them nevertheless, generation after generation.

My pure-white past did not so much atone for me as rather blacken my present all the more